Cecil W. Stoughton was the White House photographer who took the memorable photograph of Lyndon Johnson being sworn in as President on Air Force One just hours after President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.

The photograph, which was rapidly circulated around the world to prove that the US had filled the void created by the shooting and had a new President in harness, shows a grim-faced but resolute Johnson taking the oath inside a cramped aircraft cabin with a grief-stricken Jacqueline Kennedy standing beside him.

The photograph was carefully choreographed by Stoughton to correspond with the sombre mood of a nation in deep shock. He suggested that Jackie Kennedy stand on LBJ’s left side, with Lady Bird Johnson on the other, as he placed his left hand on the late President’s Bible and raised his right hand.

Recalling the moment, Stoughton said: “The first time I pushed the button, it didn’t work, and I almost died. I had a little connector that was loose because of all the bustling around, so I just pushed it in with my finger, and number two went off on schedule.”

The photograph was taken on Stoughton’s favourite Hasselblad camera which gave him a wide angle and captured more detail. The event had added pathos for Stoughton personally as he had spent the past three years giving the world a window on the Kennedys in public office and intimate family moments alike.

As the official White House photographer he took more than 8,000 pictures of the Kennedys which did much to enhance public perception of America’s first couple as dynamic in public life and all-American at home. The President’s White House secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, would sound a buzzer summoning Stoughton to the Oval Office for a picture opportunity. His photographs of the President playing with his children in the White House proved to be especially popular. He also took the only picture of JFK, his brother Bobby and Marilyn Monroe.

Cecil William Stoughton was born in Oskaloosa, Iowa, in 1920. As a captain in the US Army Corps he was assigned to the White House Army Signal Agency. When JFK saw pictures that Stoughton had taken of his inauguration in 1960 he was so impressed that he invited him to be his White House photographer.

On the morning of November 22 Stoughton photographed the Kennedys receving a warm welcome in Dallas.

“I stood on a cement base of a lamp, about two feet high, and that gave me a chance to look down,” he said. “They walked right by me, an arm’s length away, and that was the last time I made a picture of them. They got into the car a couple of seconds after that and drove into town.”

Stoughton was in the motorcade some way behind the President’s shiny blue Lincoln convertible when the shots were heard. Pictures he took thereafter included one at the scene of a family that had dropped to the ground after the President was shot and the President’s car at Parkland Hospital with a metal bucket and cloth beside the door and blood all over the seat.

He later made his way to the airport in a police car, arriving just in time to board Air Force One departing for Washington and carrying the body of the dead President, his widow and the Johnsons.

Stoughton shot pictures of agents struggling to carry the 600lb coffin up the narrow metal stairway on to the aircraft while a tearful Mrs Kennedy looked on. A Dallas police officer is captured a few paces behind with his hat held to his heart.

Once on board, Stoughton suggested that they use the aircraft dictograph to record the swearing-in ceremony in the uncomfortably crowded compartment. He had noted that Mrs Kennedy was still wearing the pink outfit in which she had accompanied her husband and that her skirt and stockings were bloodstained. He decided it would not be appropriate to reveal them in the pictures.

Stoughton stepped up on to a sofa and flattened himself against the wall. As Johnson was sworn in by Judge Sarah Hughes the only other sound in the cramped cabin was Stoughton’s camera shutter. On arrival in Washington, Stoughton developed his pictures immediately and sent them to the wire agencies.

Life magazine’s picture editor, Barbara Baker Burrows, said: “In a single photograph, Cecil provided the essential evidence of the continuity of government. In the confusion that followed the assassination, his photograph told the world that there was a new President, and the country that it was safe.”

Stoughton would go on to serve as LBJ’s White House photographer for the next two years, using his 500C Hasselblad with its interchangeable magazines that enabled him to quickly alternate between black and white and colour film. He called it “an extension of my right arm”.

He later transferred to a Pentagon job until he retired from the Army in 1967. He was then appointed chief photographer for the National Park Service. He retired to Florida in 1973.

Stoughton never received wide public acclaim for his photograph of the first moments of the new leadership but said of it: “The President knows I took them; I know I took them; my wife knows I took them. I guess that’s enough credit.”

He is survived by his wife, Faith, and their three children and one child from an earlier marriage.

Cecil W. Stoughton, photographer, was born January 18, 1920. He died on November 3, 2008, aged 88